CHAPTER VII.

HOW THE GREAT KAAN SENT THE TWO BROTHERS AS HIS ENVOYS TO

THE POPE.

When that Prince, whose name was CUBLAY KAAN, Lord of the Tartars all

over the earth, and of all the kingdoms and provinces and territories

of that vast quarter of the world, had heard all that the Brothers had

to tell him about the ways of the Latins, he was greatly pleased, and

he took it into his head that he would send them on an Embassy to the

Pope. So he urgently desired them to undertake this mission along with

one of his Barons; and they replied that they would gladly execute all

his commands as those of their Sovereign Lord. Then the Prince sent to

summon to his presence one of his Barons whose name was COGATAL, and

desired him to get ready, for it was proposed to send him to the Pope

along with the Two Brothers. The Baron replied that he would execute

the Lord’s commands to the best of his ability.

After this the Prince caused letters from himself to the Pope to be

indited in the Tartar tongue,{1} and committed them to the Two Brothers

and to that Baron of his own, and charged them with what he wished

them to say to the Pope. Now the contents of the letter were to this

purport: He begged that the Pope would send as many as an hundred

persons of our Christian faith; intelligent men, acquainted with the

Seven Arts,{2} well qualified to enter into controversy, and able

clearly to prove by force of argument to idolaters and other kinds of

folk, that the Law of Christ was best, and that all other religions

were false and naught; and that if they would prove this, he and all

under him would become Christians and the Church’s liegemen. Finally

he charged his Envoys to bring back to him some Oil of the Lamp which

burns on the Sepulchre of our Lord at Jerusalem.{3}

NOTE 1.—✛ The appearance of the Great Kaan’s letter may be

illustrated by two letters on so-called Corean paper preserved

in the French archives; one from Arghún Khan of Persia (1289),

brought by Buscarel, and the other from his son Oljaitu (May,

1305), to Philip the Fair. These are both in the Mongol language,

and according to Abel Rémusat and other authorities, in the Uighúr

character, the parent of the present Mongol writing. Facsimiles of

the letters are given in Rémusat’s paper on intercourse with Mongol

Princes, in _Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscript._ vols. vii. and viii.,

reproductions in J. B. Chabot’s _Hist. de Mar Jabalaha III._,

Paris, 1895, and preferably in Prince Roland Bonaparte’s beautiful

_Documents Mongols_, Pl. XIV., and we give samples of the two in

vol. ii.[1]

NOTE 2.—“The Seven Arts,” from a date reaching back nearly to

classical times, and down through the Middle Ages, expressed the

whole circle of a liberal education, and it is to these Seven

Arts that the degrees in arts were understood to apply. They were

divided into the _Trivium_ of Rhetoric, Logic, and Grammar, and

the _Quadrivium_ of Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music, and Geometry.

The 38th epistle of Seneca was in many MSS. (according to Lipsius)

entitled “_L. Annaei Senecae Liber de Septem Artibus liberalibus._”

I do not find, however, that Seneca there mentions categorically

more than five, viz., Grammar, Geometry, Music, Astronomy, and

Arithmetic. In the 5th century we find the Seven Arts to form

the successive subjects of the last seven books of the work of

Martianus Capella, much used in the schools during the early Middle

Ages. The Seven Arts will be found enumerated in the verses of

Tzetzes (_Chil. XI._ 525), and allusions to them in the mediæval

romances are endless. Thus, in one of the “Gestes d’Alexandre,” a